“Give yourself permission to play, and explore, and experiment. Don’t limit yourself, don’t stop yourself before you’ve even tried.” –Mac Crane
Mac Crane is an author, editor, and teacher. They are the author of the LAMBDA-award-winning novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, and the forthcoming novel, A Sharp Endless Need. They’ve received fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference and American Short Fiction, and their work has been published widely, including in The Sun, Lit Hub, Catapult, Joyland, The Offing, and elsewhere.
On Wednesday, April 23, Mac Crane is teaching a class for the WLT called “Finding Your Voice and Style.” In this class, participants will learn to develop their own styles and voices through exposure and imitation.
Here’s what Mac had to share with us:
Scribe: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write? How did you come to writing?
Mac Crane: Gosh, where to begin. I write everything: fiction (novels and short stories), nonfiction/essays, and poetry. My published books have all been novels so far, though I have a forthcoming story collection in 2027. And even within fiction, I write in different genres: speculative, coming of age, etc. My goal as a writer is to be able to write (and publish) whatever I want, without any limitations or expectations that I fit into one tidy box. I came to writing the way many people do: through reading, through a deep, deep, unparalleled love of reading.
Scribe: In your own work, how do you approach overcoming the challenges that come with writing, be it writer’s block or craft or business-related challenges?
MC: When things feel hard or overwhelming, I always come back to the joy of writing. Writing really is one of my favorite things in the world, even when it’s hard. I’m not one of those writers who likes to act like to create is to suffer. Writing is exciting and transcendental to me. I try to keep it untouchable, away from publishing and capitalism as much as I possibly can (though it’s hard to do that entirely when we live in a late capitalistic hellscape). I brainstorm a small scene that makes me laugh and cry. I write a gratitude poem. I write while observing my 4 year old sleep. I channel that goodness.
Scribe: Has there been a moment of epiphany in terms of your work, when you thought, “This is it! Now I know what I’m doing!” How long did that feeling last?
MC: Hahaha, I love that the second question implies that the feeling never lasts—in which case, you might be right. I’ve heard Garth Greenwell say that writing novels never becomes any easier, no matter how many you write, because each one is a unique problem and requires a unique solution. But you can solve it using the toolbox you’ve acquired along the way. You pick up strategies and moves and sensibilities, and having these things tends to make me feel a bit less daunted when facing the blank page.
My favorite moments are when I solve a narrative problem in a really efficient way. Like, I’m working on my third novel right now and was facing a world-building issue that was terrifying me, and then I found a way to solve it with a single sentence. That was a slam dunk. I felt like I was on top of the world. And that feeling lasted exactly until I faced a new narrative problem that needed fixing.
Scribe: What piece of advice do you find yourself giving to writers again and again?
MC: Give yourself permission to play, and explore, and experiment. Don’t limit yourself, don’t stop yourself before you’ve even tried. The greatest thing I ever did for my work was to give myself permission to explore my obsessions mercilessly, completely unworried as to whether anyone else would find them interesting or not. Because most often, if I’m obsessed, then that’s going to translate well to the page—it’s going to be engaging and exciting and result in good work that resonates with readers.
Scribe: What is one thing that people will take away from this class?
MC: Losing the fear of plagiarism and embracing the power in reading widely and imitating widely.
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Thanks, Mac!
Click here to learn more about Mac’s upcoming class.
